Video Sunday: What no one tells beginners

I wonder how much of my readership is at the Midwinter ALA Convention right now. Probably a big old chunk. That’s okay. Those of us stuck at home can make our OWN fun, even as we obsessively chew our nails in anticipation of tomorrow’s big ALA Media Awards announcements. This video should be enough to start us off. It’s such a silly premise (I love the idea of a walking talking Margaret Wise Brown) that you can’t help but love it.

Next up, some writing advice, maybe specifically picture book writing advice (though a lot of it applies to writers in general) from Mr. Ira Glass.

I once attended an 826NYC event where you could play blackjack with Ira Glass. Needless to say, the man intimidated the hell out of me, and I never went within 12 feet of him. Ended up playing Jon Scieszka at Connect 4 all night instead. Good times.

Did you not attend John & Hank Green’s moment of triumph at Carnegie Hall? No? Were you, like myself, harboring the world’s worst cough at home instead (a theme for the day)? Then fear not! The full presentation in all its rad glory is here for the viewing, start to finish. An evening of awesome indeed.

Folks. You’ve gotta stop letting me know about cool stuff all at the same time. I have a hard time holding on to cool links for future weeks. I wanna just get it all down NOW NOW NOW. Case in point, this Oliver Jeffers video. Geez. Ironic forms of transportation and everything.

Thanks to Don for the link.

This next bit came to me in a press release but since it has a lot to do with video in general I’m slapping it in here. Check it out:

This year’s theme of “You’re Reading WHAT?!?!” asked contestants to create a short video about a time when an adult tried to censor something they were reading, or a book-banning incident in the news that involved young people. We encouraged entrants to show off their video-making skills and to use their creativity, so take into consideration content, artistic and technical merit, as well as a willingness to think outside the box.

Voting is easy. View the videos here, then sign into your Gmail, Google or YouTube account and click “like” on your favorite video’s player window. The movies can also be viewed and liked on our 2012 YFEP Film Contest Playlist on YouTube. The video with the most “likes” will be declared the People’s Choice winner. The deadline for casting votes is February 15 at 5 p.m. EST.

And since this week has been just SUCH a great video week for me, even my off-topic video is a bit on-topic. A year or two ago I posted a video of Jimmy Fallon singing the theme song to Reading Rainbow in the style of Jim Morrison. Well, that version was pulled from the internet relatively swiftly, so if you didn’t see it there it’s gone, man, gone. Fortunately, there’s such a thing as second chances as here we can see a stripped down version of the same song with a little backstory to boot. It feels good to send you off with this.

Elizabeth Bird is currently New York Public Library's Youth Materials Collections Specialist. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of NYPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

Count me in among the non-Midwinter attendees! I’m very excited about tomorrow morning and resigning myself to the fact that I probably won’t get into the webcast this year. Story time ends at 11, so I’ll be cutting it close! Oh, well–they are good about updating the Facebook/Twitter pages, but it’s fun to watch the presentations and hear the reactions.

I sympathize wholeheartedly. Three years ago a class visit came in 40 minutes early, just as they were going to announce Newbery and Caldecott. The year after that I had a sonogram scheduled and came out to tweets that seemed to make so sense (“Moon over what now?). Last year I finally got to watch it start to finish, but Twitter loves to kick me out when I live tweet. I don’t care, though. This year I’m going for it!

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About A Fuse #8 Production

Features everything from librarian previews of upcoming children's books to news, reviews, and videos. If it has something to do with children's literature, it will rate a mention here.

Betsy Bird is the Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She's reviewed for The New York Times and Kirkus, writes articles for Horn Book and SLJ, and wrote the picture book Giant Dance Party. You can contact her at Fusenumber8@gmail.com or follow her on . . .